Spoken from the Front (17 page)

As the Afghan interpreter was interpreting, she was looking
a bit blank and perhaps a bit worried. Then a [British]
corporal on the gate took me aside and said: 'He didn't interpret
what you've just said. What he actually said to her was:
"She [Morgan] says you are a very bad woman and can't
work out why you are here. She says surely if you were a
good Afghan woman you would stay at home and you would
not come out because your husband wouldn't let you be
here.''' The corporal had only done a six-week introduction
course in Pashtu but he had worked out that the interpreter
had not interpreted properly. Later that day the interpreter was
sacked. There is plenty of dishonesty amongst the
interpreters and it's often so hard to pick this up. You can see
what kind of things the Afghan women are up against.

We took the woman into a hardened area and she took her
burka off. We gave her a cup of tea and a KitKat and she sat
talking to me like any of my friends would. She was in her
thirties and had already had ten children – six were still
living. She was a teacher and had come to discuss the roof not
being finished in her school. She was wondering whether
anyone could do anything to support her with this. In fact, we
were able to help. Because of recent military successes, the
Taliban had been pushed back from near her school and this
had enabled a surge of reconstruction and development in
her area. Over the next eight months we did all we could
because we recognized what an amazing person she was to
have taken this risk, and how much it could benefit her
community. Her husband was a taxi driver and he was aware
of what she was doing. In order for her to get to the operating
base, her husband had had to take a big detour out of the
area and dropped her five K away [so Taliban supporters
would not link them to the British forces]. She lived in a town
that was within ten miles of us and walked the rest of the way
with her brother and their donkey.

Her bravery was inspirational. If the Taliban knew what
she had done, they might have kidnapped her or her
children, or worse. At the time, male and female teachers
were all getting night letters. These were anonymous letters
through their letterbox saying, 'Don't work with the British.
They are working for the [Afghan] government. You know
what will happen to you or your family if you continue to
work.' To the Taliban, the government were as much the
enemy as we were.

Robert Mead, Ministry of Defence press officer

Forgive me, children, for it has been almost two weeks since
my last confession. In that time much and little has
happened, though it's still freezing at night and the beard's
still coming along nicely, so no need to worry there. But two
weeks is clearly too long a wait for you all as at least one
person has been pining for my heroic tales and made a personal
plea for me to pick up the mighty quill once more.

But let me first say it has not gone unnoticed that there are
still several of you lucky people receiving these tales of
derring-do who have yet to put finger to keyboard and reply.
Now I know this sounds shocking to those who have, not
least for those of you who know how self-important I can be.
Pull your fingers out. Don't you know how many bullets I
had to dodge to make it to the McDonald's Internet café at the
end of the road?

So here I am. You join me at the four-week juncture,
which means I am just over a quarter of the way through.
Yoicks.

The extent of your hero's heroic heroism hasn't gone much
beyond a trip to the lavatory cubicle as a beefy Marine just
leaves and one is left in the momentary uncertainty of turning
round and leaving the man thinking you have only come to
perv, or soldiering on and then having to sit on a warm seat
engulfed by someone else's noxious vapours. And bearing in
mind the dried fruit they give us for roughage, this is not a
pleasant experience.

I was due to take a day trip to Camp Bastion last Saturday
only for the small matter of a fatality to tie me to the desk
instead. As it happens, there isn't much for us to do in the
event of a fatality, other than spend the rest of the day in
negotiations with the other authorities we have to deal with
over who and when should release details.

Lummy, that was a bit serious.

Last Thursday was a long day. A long day. For once it did
not begin in the early hours with me being awoken by my
bladder wishing to make an entrance stage left. Instead I had
to thank a member of the local insurgency as we were woken
at 2.15 a.m. when a bomb went off 150 metres from Grenade
Alley (you remember Grenade Alley – the delightful walllined
avenue in which I live). I say I was woken by the bomb.
I wasn't. I slept through it, but was woken by the rest of my
tent when the alert was sounded. Was this upsetting? Too
bloody right it was upsetting, as I then had to sit out in the
mother-lovingly freezing cold for the next three hours in my
helmet and body armour huddled in the bomb shelter. I say
shelter, it provides possibly slightly less shelter than the average
non-stick cake tin. And it provides even less warmth at 2
in the bloody morning after one has only been asleep for an
hour and a half. I went dressed for a long night just in case as,
thankfully, your hero sleeps in his armour-plated thermal
vest and long pants, so I was already half dressed when we
had to helmet-up. The first hour or so was OK but, by crikey,
I was rigid by the time we were eventually given the all-clear.
Next time I shall be sure to take my hat, gloves and MP3
player.

The day perked up with the chance to write some proper
war-y stuff after an attack on a Taliban HQ early in the morning
allowed me to get my teeth into things.

However, the highlight of the day occurred when Mead
received his first post of the tour (take note, family, hang your
heads in shame). On this occasion the boys had come good
and I was treated to a parcel of porn from
EG
[
Colchester
Evening Gazette
– his former colleagues], Gawd bless 'em. Well
done, the 70s throwback super-group of Clifford, Jones and
Palmer.

Then I had gammon steak and egg for tea. Lovely.

What more can I tell you?

I am getting fat, or at least fatter. Coupled with my beard
there is every chance I may well resemble Ricky Tomlinson/Jim
Royle by the time I return. My feeble state of fitness was
exemplified last Wednesday when I was on the verge of free-vomiting.
I am told this is a popular sport in Army camps,
what with the fear of dysentery and vomiting always being
only a squirt away. (Not here but when I was in Iraq – oooh,
get me – one camp always set aside a Portaloo for those
struck down by the liquid laxative so prevalent was it.)

On this occasion, my being doubled up was all of my own
doing. I had agreed to take part in a bit of circuit training for
charity, organized by our combat camera team. I started with
a 1.5 kilometre cycle ride and moved on to a 500-metre row.
Both of these were, I see the stupidity of it now, undertaken
alongside a very large Marine with a high volume of muscle
definition. Mead being the macho-competitive type and
always up for a challenge, decided to attempt to match the
pace that this trained killer adopted. After the first two
disciplines, in which I was a mere couple of seconds behind
our well-honed adversary, I moved on to the floor mats to
attempt 60 press ups, made it to 11, stopped, lay down, had
my photo taken and lost a fair amount of facial colour as my
body went into meltdown and I had to take myself off to a
well-ventilated area and collapse. I am now a laughing stock.

You will be pleased to know the deficiencies in my
expensive sleeping system have been rectified, thanks to a
$15 duvet bought from the camp shop, which provides
considerably more warmth than my bloody expensive
sleeping-bag.

And I know you liked them last time so let's take a few
moments for today's lesson on TLAs (and TLA stands
for ...?)

SAF – Small-Arms Fire

PID – Positively Identified

MSR – Main Supply Route

ISTAR – Information, Surveillance, Targeting, Acquisition
and Reconnaissance

EF – Enemy Forces

FF – Friendly Forces

Put it all together and you get: 'Using ISTAR, FF PID EF on
MSR and engaged with SAF', and so on.

And answers on a postcard as to the definition of today's
phrase, 'dynamic unpredictability', which sounds about as
far removed from a definition of my good self as one could
imagine.

In such an environment, where every day seems strangely
like any other, the little things become important. Each day is
currently being given meaning by the 'Chick of the Day' poll,
conducted by an engineer clerk who sits a few feet away and
who, each day, changes the screen-saver picture of a woman
on his computer. The few moments, which are often stretched
as long as possible, spent looking at the day's picture are important
reminders that women who don't dress solely in
combats and who aren't disguised as men and, in most cases,
it's a pretty thin disguise, do exist.

Next time we speak I hope to have finally been out of camp
as I am due to go into Lashkar Gah in the next few days. I
might have even had my hair cut by an Afghan who charges
$4. I hear he uses one of the rusty machetes you can buy at
Kandahar airfield market. These are warrior people after all.
Pictures to follow. Grrr.

Lieutenant Rachel Morgan, Royal Naval Medical Branch

The soldiers on guard duty at the FOBs [forward operating
bases] try to make themselves quite approachable. However, if
people come in looking for food or medical support, they are
usually turned away. We had a guy who often came into an
FOB in Gereshk to give us intelligence – about what was going
on with the Taliban in the area. One day he had given us some
information and one of the soldiers thanked him and enquired
as to whether there was anything we could do for him. He
asked if there was a doctor available, as he was suffering from
a headache and perhaps he could take a pill to make it better.
The [British soldier] explained that we don't provide health care
for everyone we meet, but he'd see what he could do. When he
[the Afghan] saw the British doctor he told him that there was
a piece of shrapnel in his head which he had had for twenty
years, since an injury sustained when fighting with the
mujahideen. The British doctor agreed to take this shrapnel out
of his head. He [the Afghan] did not receive any anaesthetic for
this. The doctor just cut his head open and yanked it [the
shrapnel] out. He [the Afghan, in his late thirties] just chanted
all the way through, praying, and got himself into an almost
hypnotic state that most of us cannot imagine. It was an
incredible thing to witness. The British doctor gave the Afghan,
a Hazara tribesman, his shrapnel in a plastic bottle to take away.

Captain Charlotte Cross, Territorial Army

I went on a really long patrol to an IDP [internally displaced
people] camp north of Lashkar Gah the other day. A female
elder there has been threatened because she and her daughter
work at the school ('school' being 5 UNICEF tents with
nothing inside). The woman's very feisty. She's been beaten
up before and shot in the leg. Apparently her phone
number's been given out to somebody who's now phoning
her up and threatening her, and she said she'll drink the
blood of the person who betrayed her by giving her phone
number away – these people don't mess around. So a colour
sergeant asked me to go with him to the camp, to try to find
out what's going on, and to speak to any females we might
come across. We already know the Taliban infiltrate the camp;
it's right next to the Helmand river and they use that area as
a crossing point, and hide out in the camp before moving into
Lashkar Gah or further south.

It was a really cold windy day, and even in my thermals
and body armour and webbing, I was freezing. We drove
through Lashkar Gah town, then up through Mukhtar, and
when we stopped the vehicles and got out we were in the
middle of a maze of mud-walled compounds, some with
UNICEF tent material for a roof, some with little chimneys
made of hollow tree branches, and smoke pouring out. We
went over to where some middle-aged men were sitting
against a wall, and suddenly we had about 20 children
crowding round us as well ... These were definitely the
poorest Afghans I've met so far. The kids all had bare filthy
black feet and red, streaming eyes ... and huddled miserably
in the howling wind. Some smiled when I spoke to them, but
mostly they just looked desperate. So did the men. We asked
the kids if they go to school, and they all replied yes, and one
older boy held up a little black bag with a school exercise
book and a couple of pencils. It was obviously his pride and
joy, pathetic though it was. The men denied the Taliban were
in the camp and said everything was fine, no security
problems here, but we didn't believe them. They said nothing
ever happens on this camp it's very quiet ... so we said what
about the mine we found here 2 weeks ago ... and they said
oh apart from that. And we said what about the fire-fight at
the police check-point down the road ... and they said oh yes
and apart from that. The CSgt told them he wanted to help
them, but while they continue to allow their elders to give
what little food aid they get to the Taliban, and shelter the
Taliban in the camp, the Taliban will fight us and we won't be
able to help them. The men listened intently and looked very
sheepish. They didn't argue. We left them and walked
through the streets to find some different people to talk to.

The interpreter showed me some long, green leaves he'd
taken from one of the little children. Apparently the child
had been thinning out the poppy plants somewhere, and had
come back with spare poppy leaves to make into soup. That's
what poor people do, even though it puts opium in their
bloodstream. It's like nettle soup I suppose.